I noticed this weekend that a lot of my friends didn't have voicemail set up. After thinking about it, I'm not sure I have one with a custom greeting, but setting up voicemail on an iPhone isn't actually difficult at all.
How to set up voicemail on iPhone
First, navigate to the home screen and tap on the Phone button. This is a green button with a phone on it that takes you to the dialpad, which has additional tabs for recent calls, contacts, and favorites. In the lower right corner, you'll see a label for your voicemail. Click on that. (It's usually in the bottom row of apps on the home screen. Mine looks like this, but remember, mine is pink because I customized it, which you can do here Follow the steps listed ).
If you haven't set up voicemail at all, you'll see a screen that says "To retrieve your voicemail, first set up a password and greeting." Click "Set up now" and you will be prompted to create a password. Both the password and greeting can be changed later, but we'll cover that in more detail later.
How to set up a voicemail greeting on iPhone
If you just set up your voicemail and created a password, you'll be taken to a screen to set up your greeting. If you already have a voicemail, you can access this screen by pressing "Greetings" in the upper right corner.
From there, you can choose if you want a default message to play when someone calls, or if you want to record (or re-record) a custom message. By default it is just an automated voice saying that the owner of the number cannot be reached. Habits are habits, and you can say whatever you want in a pre-recorded greeting.
If you choose Custom, you will be able to press Play, Stop, or Record. Recording the new one will overwrite the old one, which you can see by clicking "Play".
Other iPhone Voicemail Settings
Your iPhone's voicemail options can be highly customized beyond just setting a password and greeting.
In Settings, navigate to Phone and scroll past the section about calls. There, you can open live voicemail, which transcribes your incoming messages so you can read them without listening. You can also set your phone to immediately dial the number of an unknown caller, and your caller will be muted and go directly to voicemail.
At the end of the list, you'll see an option to change your voicemail password so you don't have to keep the password you selected during setup.
